


Waning

by bombcollar



Category: Dark Souls III, Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Angst, Crossover, Family, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-28
Updated: 2017-06-28
Packaged: 2018-11-20 11:11:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11334537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bombcollar/pseuds/bombcollar
Summary: Lorian does his best for his brother, but things are falling apart, their home and the certainty of their future.





	Waning

It seems to Lorian like the manor is dying, crumbling to pieces around him. Every day, something new came undone, no matter how hard he worked to fix it. Pipes rusted through, tiles fell from the roof, lights fizzled out and drafts poured in from unknown sources.

He couldn’t hire anybody to do the repairs, for fear they would find the trapdoor in the gardens, beneath the browning ivy, that they would hear something muttering and growling down there. He avoided it whenever he could, but he knew he could not avoid it forever.

Something keeps him from sleep tonight and he finds himself pacing the dark, narrow halls, listening to the differing creaks of the floorboards. Even the most skilled assassin could not traverse this ancient place without sound. The thought brings him little comfort.

Lorian finds his brother sitting at the balcony in his chair, wrapped in his shawl, pale as the moonlight painting the distant sea in silver. Like a ghost in more ways than one, sickly and colorless, his presence in the mortal plane tenuous at best. “What are you doing awake?” Lorian asks him, taking the chair’s handles. “You’re going to catch a cold sitting out here-”

Lothric turns to him, his reddish eyes wet and so full of sorrow it gives Lorian pause, and he moves his hand to place it on Lothric’s thin shoulder instead. “...what’s wrong?”

“She isn’t coming back for us, is she.” Lothric looks down at his hands in his lap. Lorian hadn’t noticed at first, but he’d brought his pet rats with him. Heather and Antimony, one with a black hood and one red-eyed, albino, just like him.

Children and animals born frail and without pigment were said to be conduits of the Outsider, prone to his influence as a dry sponge was to water. Only hours after his birth, their mother had been taken in by the Overseers, disappeared from her hospital bed for suspicion of witchcraft. They wanted him as well, but their father, a governor and always so generous when the collection plate came around, had insisted he keep the child... Insisted that, with piety and stringent teachings, he could keep his son out of the Outsider’s clutches. Tentatively, they had agreed, with the caveat that if Lothric began to show any signs of supernatural influence, that his father would turn him over. Of course, within the governor’s private manor, it was difficult for to keep an eye on things... A man was entitled to his privacy, even if he did sometimes have to buy it off.

Even from a young age, Lothric was strange. He would appear out of nowhere, without sound, even though he was incapable of walking or moving his bulky wheelchair on his own. You would turn around, and there he would be, as if he’d been there all along. He would go into catatonic states, murmur in strange tongues, and though his doctors were convinced they were seizures, their father was convinced he was peering into the Void itself.

Oceiros became obsessed with the thing that had taken hold of his son, sought answers in prayer and castigation, and when that failed him, turned to science, to the whales. Fixated on the beasts and convinced of a connection, he spent hours in his laboratory, poring over natural philosophy texts and dissection records for answers that simply weren’t there. In the end, he stopped calling for doctors, dismissed the nurses for fear they would see something they ought not to, and Lorian alone was left to care for his ailing brother.

Lothric strokes Antimony on her twitching nose as the rat nuzzles his fingers. “They told us, they said she was a witch, she escaped from the Abbey and disappeared... I thought she would want to see me again. Father always insisted she would come back. But she hasn’t.”

Why all of this right now? Why not in the morning when they had the warmth of the sun to chase off such dreary thoughts? Lorian sighs. “We can talk about this in the morning. It’s cold out, we can’t have you getting sick again so soon...”

“No! No, wait...” Lothric grabs the armrests of his chair as Lorian moves to pick him up. “...please, just a little longer. Then I’ll go to bed. I just want to look at the moon, it’s really big tonight...”

Lorian glances up at the sky. The moon doesn’t seem any larger than usual to him, but he nods anyway. “Yes, it’s... it’s very nice. Is that the only reason you’re out here? You can see the moon from your bedroom...”

Lothric doesn’t answer, stroking the rats nestled in his lap and staring out at the horizon. The sea is calm and glassy, and he can see the lights of a distant ship as it drifts towards port. Light and shadow are about all he can make out, with his sight so poor and tears beading in his eyes. Eventually he does speak again. “She’s not coming back. They’re going to take me away, they’ll find out what you did to Father and you won’t be able to protect me from the Abbey like he did.”

 _You have always been soft,_ Oceiros told Lorian, _Unwilling to reach into the belly of the world and tear out what is rightfully yours. You fit the uniform and you wield the sword and pistol like a general but your heart is soft, when the time comes you won’t have the stomach to do what you have to. You would stand by and watch crows eat your brother alive, without the heart to see them starve, and when they come for him you will let him be taken. I am the only thing standing between him and the Abbey and I will do with him as I wish-_

And Lorian had pushed him. Watched him tumble backwards down the stairs into the darkness, and before he hit bottom Lorian had thrown the door closed and latched it. Buried it beneath stones and ivy until he could no longer hear his father’s cries.

He did not hear much of him at all these days. The door had been silent for a long, long time, but part of him knew his father was still down there. Still alive.

“Oh... no, no they won’t do that,” Lorian sinks into one of the chairs beside Lothric, putting a warm arm around his shoulders. “They won’t find out. I promise, I’ve kept you safe so far, it’s going to be okay...”

As much as it pained him to even think it, Lothric’s illness would probably take him before the Abbey did. He was hardly out of bed at all these days, always feverish and wracked with horrible coughs. Lorian fetched medication for him, but it only ever staved off the illness, never eliminated it. All the doctors he’d ever spoken to told him the same thing, that his brother was simply frail, some people were born weak, not destined to live no matter how much medicine you forced down their throat. Science could not save those nature had turned against.

Lothric sniffs, lifting a hand to wipe his cheeks. “Why can’t we go? Just get on a ship and disappear? People do it all the time...”

“Life is not a story, Lothric. These things aren’t as easy as your books make it seem-”

“But why not?”

“Because...” Lorian feels tears prick his own eyes, but he knows Lothric’s vision is too poor to notice. He might hear it in his voice. “Because it just isn’t, it’s costly, we’d need passports, people who wouldn’t rat us out, a place to go... Ships aren’t very clean, not the ones who’ll transport you secretly, and there’s piracy, storms... whales. It just isn’t...”

Lothric falls silent, other than his hitching breath. Heather licks the tears from his fingers, washes her face as they fall on her head. Slowly, Lorian gathers his brother into his arms, mindful of the rats. He seems as weightless as moonlight. If only it was that easy, to board a ship or a train and disappear, but no place was truly safe. At least here Lorian knew what to expect, how to keep their secrets sunken. “I’m so sorry,” he says softly as Lothric curls up against his chest, all chilled flesh and protruding bones. “I’m here. I’ll always be here, no matter what happens. Let’s get you back to bed, you’re freezing...”

Once he’s tucked his brother in, covered him in his feather quilt and let the rats back into their cage, Lorian returns to the balcony. He sits, looks up at the moon. Maybe it really is larger, the air full of uncommon clarity. On a warmer night he could have drifted off, but he remains vigilant, watching the sky, listening to his home creak and moan as it dies all around him.


End file.
